Kowai Hanashi
by Sunlight through Leaves
Summary: Everyone knows that the Academy is haunted, but no one can agree on exactly what it's haunted by. Kakashi and Iruka know all too well. Written for Water-bby as part of Kakairu-Fest's Winter Exchange.


_**Summary:** Everyone knows that the Academy is haunted, but no one can agree on what it's haunted by. Kakashi and Iruka know all too well._  
><em><strong>Pairing(s):<strong> KakaIru_  
><em><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> Kowai hanashi translates to 'scary story' or 'horror story.' There is also reference to the japanese tradition of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai or a Gathering of 100 Supernatural Tales, where 100 candles are lit, and after each story is told, a candle is extinguished. The act of extinguishing the final candle is believed to summon a supernatural entity. Written for water_bby and beta'd by SumiHatake/Kiterie (see note at end for prompt details)._

OOOOOOO

Simple. Honestly, was Minato even trying to challenge him anymore? He prodded the trap with a spear of chakra. The characters glowed a sickly green before turning to dark ash, and he allowed himself a small, self-satisfied smile. He made it a point to sneak out of every all-shinobi meeting – standardized hitae-ate regulations had little to do with being a successful shinobi, but had been the subject of two hours of discussion so far tonight. All the previous meetings had run a similar path.

It had been a remarkable challenge at the beginning to avoid the notice of the full force of jounin and his fellow chuunin. He had never been able to fool Minato, however, and the minute it ceased to be a challenge, traps, pitfalls and alarms miraculously appeared around every conceivable exit. So Minato treated it as training, and Kakashi was happy to oblige. Anything to be productive.

_He's off his game tonight._ With the trap cleared, the window swung outwards effortlessly. He eased over the sill and dropped into the silent hallway beyond.

Someone was sitting on the bench across the way, and that someone looked easily as surprised as he was.

Though he was still crouched in the shadows, he couldn't avoid locking eyes with the other boy – much younger than him, his brain catalogued, far too young to be here for the meeting. Plus Kakashi didn't recognize him, although there was the hint of familiar features under the baby fat.

"Why are you here?" The question came from both of them at the same time, but the emphasis fell in different places. Kakashi hit the 'you' hard, while the other boy seemed more confused about his location.

"You're not a shinobi." Kakashi pointed out the obvious. Had the other boy been a shinobi, Kakashi would have noticed his chakra long before entering the window. Untrained kids tended to have this amorphous blob of energy that was hard to separate from the general background noise.

The boy bristled, and his lower lip jutted out defiantly. "My parents are! I'm going to be one someday too."

_His parents._ That explained the vague recognition. Kakashi cocked his to one side and studied his face.

"You're supposed to be inside." The boy dropped the scroll he'd been reading onto his lap and crossed his arms. "They called a meeting for all shinobi, so you should be in there."

_He knows who I am?_ With shinobi parents, it wasn't all that surprising. Everyone knew everyone, and Kakashi, given both his family situation and his own dramatic rise through the ranks, was a bit of a special case. "Why aren't you at home?"

Embarrassment replaced defiance for the briefest moment. "They can't trust me at home alone." His hand rose almost subconsciously to scrub across the freshly healed skin that marred his face.

Kakashi let his eyes drop from the boy's to the mark just below them.

The boy caught him staring and blushed. "Why aren't you inside?"

It was a simple defense tactic to turn attention away from oneself, but if Kakashi was right, the boy couldn't be much older than six or seven, so he shouldn't expect all that much. A flash of inspiration struck him. "It's boring inside. I'm going somewhere more interesting."

Just as he figured - a light sparked in the back of the boy's eyes. Any kid who managed to get himself that badly injured with a parent's weapon wouldn't be content just sitting in the beige, undecorated, and mostly unfurnished corridor.

"Like what?" The boy scooted to the edge of his seat, scroll forgotten on the bench beside him.

Kakashi leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. "I'm going over to the Academy."

Brown eyes flew wide open. "Now? But it's..."

"What are you, chicken?"

"No!"

Silence stretched between them, as if each was waiting for the other to make the first move.

Iruka finally broke it. "C'mon!"

A small hand snagged the edge of his sleeve and tugged him forwards. _Oops._ That was not the reaction Kakashi'd been expecting. Perhaps Minato had been right to insist that he focus on psychological studies for the time being. He apparently wasn't nearly as good at reading people as he thought he was.

Most children would not venture near the Academy after dark, and Kakashi – though he would vehemently deny the accusation of being a _child_ – was no exception. This was an unacceptable shortcoming, but the psyche, like any part of the body, could be exercised. Any kid with as much spunk as this one would be up for a game of dare that would push them deeper into the dark shadows that haunted the Academy at night.

The only way to train out this kind of irrational fear was to face it and overcome it. Facing it was so much easier with someone else goading you on, but this wasn't so much goading as it was forcing.

The boy kept a tight grip on his sleeve, pulling him down the long, curved hallway to the steep stairs that led to the second floor and the balcony that connected the Academy to the Hokage Tower.

Kakashi frowned down at the shorter figure and the resolute set of the boy's shoulders. It must be bravado. "Who are you?"

His chin lifted ever so slightly when he turned to answer. "Umino Iruka."

Definitely bravado. He'd met Iruka's father on a couple of occasions – quite a talented shinobi who was audacious almost to a fault. That kind of determination likely saved him from any number of sticky situations.

Iruka, however, did not have the benefit of his father's years of experience to help support the brave face he was putting on. It would falter any minute now.

Determined strides became hesitant, and Kakashi looked forward to see the cause of the change. A wall of shadow separated the base of the stairs from the Academy's entrance hall. He stepped past Iruka, who had stopped entirely now, and onto the open balcony.

Iruka still had a tight grip on Kakashi's sleeve, and he was forced to either release his hold or stumble forward. Wood creaked under his feet with each step, and he halted again slightly behind Kakashi.

"They say it's haunted." Kakashi whispered.

Iruka swallowed loudly and wedged up against his side, eyeing the depths of the shadows.

"Years ago, there was an ANBU who was given a mission to kill a double agent here in our village." Twin staircases wound down to the main floor. Kakashi wasn't entirely sure whether one of them was edging the other forward or if they both were moving simply because they didn't want to be viewed as weak. The single light burning in the center of the entrance cast strange shadows up the far walls. "This agent had been passing information to the enemy for several years and had caused the deaths of seven of our people. He did it all because our village would not accept his kekkai genkai – a jutsu that solidified a person's blood with a single touch to an open wound, providing a nourishing substance that sustained the man's life well beyond normal."

Every kid who passed through the Academy halls had heard this story enough times that it usually lost its potency, unless of course, you had the audacity to be telling it _in_ the Academy after dark.

"In the last moments of his life," Kakashi continued, "He teleported to his attacker's house, stabbed his wife and killed his daughter. When the ANBU found him, he still clutched the bloody kunai he'd used and cursed the name of his attacker and all that reside within the village, vowing to exact revenge on the village that shunned him. What better way to destroy the heart of the village than by targeting the youth? Even in death, he stalks these halls. Any child found within these walls at night falls under his kekkai genkai and is found in the morning pale and lifeless and entirely without blood."

Slow, faltering steps had brought them to one of the main classroom halls. During the day, light streamed in through the classroom windows, causing the polished wood flooring in the hall to glow softly, warming the entire space. The Academy was inviting and almost homey when the sun was up.

In the dark, the well-worn walls and floors looked shabby, giving the whole place a chilling feeling of abandonment. All the classroom doors stood closed, and anything within them was silhouetted against the doors' windows by the faint outside lights.

"The only warning they get that he's coming is the sound of blood dripping from his kunai. Drip...drip..." Kakashi immediately wished he hadn't made the noise. The minute he'd done it, he could have sworn that the ebony shadow against the nearest classroom door shifted slightly. He glued his eyes forward on the far end of the hallway. This was training. He would not be held back by this ridiculous fear, and he was certainly not going to chicken out first.

Iruka edged closer to him.

"What's wrong? Scared?"

"Do you hear that?" Impossibly wide eyes stared into the distance, and Iruka's breath came in short pants.

"I don't hear anything." Kakashi was beginning to regret the entire thing. He hadn't intended to reduce a young kid to a puddle of fear. He jostled Iruka's arm with his elbow. "Hey, it's just your imagination."

"There's...dripping."

A faint series of viscous plops reached the edge of his hearing. He was suddenly very grateful for the warm presence plastered to his side.

"You hear it, don't you?"

Kakashi nodded, not trusting his voice.

"What is it?"

Even at his young age, Kakashi was all too well acquainted with the sound of dripping blood. He drew his arm tighter around Iruka's narrow shoulders and started to back away.

One hesitant step followed another.

_Plip. Plip._

It came from his right side this time. Kakashi froze, dragging Iruka to a halt. Another echoed behind him. The abnormally loud rattling of his breath in his ears was only rivaled by the growing thudding in his chest. _Where...?_ Despite every mental protest, he forced his gaze incrementally away from the end of the hallway to the bulk of darkness on the classroom door to the right.

Iruka grabbed his waist and yelled "Boo!" at the top of his lungs.

Hatake Kakashi screamed.

Though the fact of such an occurrence would never be repeated even under pain of death – and Kakashi would certainly threaten enough of that in the very near future – the truth of the matter remained. He had screamed.

Shrieked, really, but he didn't see the need to be that specific.

Kakashi didn't even know that he knew how to scream.

Iruka looked more surprised than he did at the sudden outburst of sound, but that lasted for scarce moments before he started giggling.

"Shut up!" His mask had a new purpose – hiding his scarlet face. Blushing was yet another thing Kakashi hadn't realized that he knew how to do.

"You're afraid of ghosts?"

"You can't fight ghosts." Kakashi shot back.

"Yeah, but..."

"You said you heard dripping!"

"Well, duh. There're leaking things everywhere in here." Iruka had stepped away from him and wrapped an arm around his stomach, still laughing. Now that Iruka pointed it out, the drips sounded a great deal less like blood.

He had no good retort, but he opened his mouth anyway, hoping that some divinely inspired comeback would occur to him, so that he could put the snickering _kid_ in his place. _I am Hatake Kakashi, one of the youngest chuunin in the village's history, and I am going to be bested by some..._

The door at the end of the hall slammed open with enough force to rattle the class photos on the walls around it.

"I'm not falling for your act this time." Had it not been for the scramble of sandals on the wood floor behind him, Kakashi never would have turned around. "Iruka-kun?"

If he squinted, he could almost make out the vaguely Iruka-shaped hole left in the air. "Iruka-kun?" He called again, ignoring the slight tremor in his voice.

_Not an act this time._ Kakashi used a teleportation jutsu all the time. There was absolutely no significance in his choice to use it now.

None whatsoever.

OOOOOOOOOO

"Hell." Kurenai let her head fall backwards as she exhaled the curse. She met Asuma's quizzical look. "I left the exams at the Academy. I promised Akane-chan that I'd have them graded by tomorrow when she got back."

As a former teacher at the Academy, Kurenai regularly stepped in to cover classes. She'd had one hell of week running Akane's students through the shinobi qualifiers when an injury during a routine mission had taken Akane out of commission, so an assorted group of her fellow shinobi had dragged her out at the end of the ordeal for food and a quick drink before she finished up the last of her assignment.

Iruka looked up from where he'd been picking through his food. "You can just go back and get them on your way home, right?" At the incredulous looks that he got from almost all of his companions, he asked again, hesitantly. "Right?"

"Are you kidding? I'm not going back there at this time of night!"

"Why not? I'm there at night all the time." So the halls weren't exactly lively at night, but until Anko pointed it out, Iruka hadn't really noticed the total lack of humanity.

"You're nuts!" Anko snorted into her sake.

Asuma leaned forward on his elbows. "Come on, after dark, Iruka? Everybody knows that place is haunted."

"Right!" Anko pointed with enough force to slosh sake over her hand. "The student who sealed herself inside an isolation jutsu."

"Exac... What?"

Still in the process of mopping up sake with her sleeve, Anko had to pause to explain. "She...She couldn't find a quiet enough place to study, so she activated an isolation jutsu. Because she did it so well, she can never get out, and the only time that it opens a door is when she's asleep and her chakra relaxes the jutsu. There's a door that appears that's never there otherwise and can't possibly fit in the building if you look at it from the outside, and if you go in and wake her up, you're stranded there with her."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Though Asuma asked the question, he seemed to just beat Kurenai to it. "It's haunted by that teacher who drowned trying to save a student. Only time I ever went in there at night I wound up wading through black water to find the door. That stuff made it all the way up to my neck before I got out."

_Now this is interesting._ The meat on the grill in the center of the table was beginning to char around the edges, and Iruka gratefully took the excuse to busy himself with it while he listened in. _I wonder if anyone else has ever compared stories._

"Wait, you never told me that."

"Don't you remember that night I came home...?" Asuma turned to his wife.

Soft rustling belied the existence of a person halfway buried in shadows at the back corner of the booth. Kakashi pulled himself out of his slouch and leaned over to Iruka, murmuring, "I liked that one. Very clever."

He lifted his glass in a half salute. "Thank you."

"But it's not even remotely close to what I saw." The conversation across the table had continued unabated, and Kurenai was shaking her head. "I don't know what the story is behind it, but there was a figure in one of the upper windows in an old ANBU uniform, and another time, it was a little boy with no face who just stood in the middle of the hallway and watched me without eyes or anything." She shuddered.

"_That_ was disturbing." Kakashi murmured.

"Hey, you started that theme."

"I did not."

"Yes, you did." Knowing Kakashi's stubbornness all too well, Iruka set his chopsticks down and twisted to face him. "You had that little girl right before it who was always appearing in doorways the minute you turned your back and disappearing whenever you caught sight of her in the corner of your eye."

Kakashi aimed a finger in his direction and sucked in a breath to argue before his hand dropped. "Right."

"Something wrong?" Their conversation had taken place in little more than hushed whispers, but the argumentative tones would be unmistakable even from across the table.

"Not at all." Iruka smiled.

After shaking the last of the sake from her hand, Anko sat back in her chair. "You know, I can't even remember where I heard that story about the student, but I definitely saw the extra door one night shortly after that. That's the one that stuck, but I've seen all sorts of other things in there."

"Plus the doors fly open." Kurenai added.

Again, Iruka was grateful for the convenient food distraction. The others probably wouldn't notice that he was laughing if he kept his head down. "That's because someone left a window open in the classroom! If you don't latch the door properly, it creates a negative pressure and pulls them open. Haven't you ever noticed that it only happens when there's a big storm outside?"

"No. I'm too busy being creeped out by the storm."

Anko groaned. "That place is _so_ creepy in storms."

A pair of chopsticks reached over Iruka's shoulder, aiming for the cooked meat at the far edge of the grill. Kakashi used the motion to put his mouth close to Iruka's ear. "Did you know that?"

He knew his explanation would get Kakashi's attention. "Are you kidding? I wouldn't have gone into such a panic if I'd known that."

The door flying open that night had scared the pants off of him, and it had taken him several years to work out the mechanism that caused it. Knowing why it happened did not, however, make it any less heart-attack inducing, and Iruka made sure to go through and properly close the doors first thing after arriving at the Academy at night.

He did take a certain deep pride that neither the shenanigans with the doors nor any of the other multitude of things that occurred within the academy walls at night had ever made him scream. Spooked him, yes. Made him jump five feet in the air and race back to his classroom like the four horsemen of the Apocalypse were after him, most definitely. But scream, no.

Kakashi held the dubious honor of being the only one to succumb to fear badly enough to vocalize it.

In retrospect, he could understand how the happenings at the Academy could be really unnerving to people who were not privy to the inside joke. "Look, Kurenai-san, I can go pick up your papers for you and drop them by your house."

"No, Iruka-kun, you don't have to do that! I can..." Her face blanched.

"It's really no hassle." Iruka cut her off. "I have to stop by there anyway."

She smiled brightly at him. "Thank you so much. I owe you coffee."

"Promises, promises." Someone had kicked his bag deep under the table, and he ducked to recover it. When he stood back up, all three of the people across the table were looking over his shoulder.

"Are you deserting us too, Kakashi-san?" Anko cocked her head to one side.

Kakashi was standing just behind of him with hands shoved deep in his pockets, clearly waiting for him to move. "Maa, what kind of shinobi would I be if I let a comrade venture into a building of horror? Besides as a jounin, it is my duty to protect a chuunin."

Both Iruka's eyebrows shot upward. _Protect?_ He opened his mouth.

"I think Kurenai-san would appreciate getting her papers sooner rather than later." An indifferent gesture indicated the door, quite effectively taking the wind out of his sails.

Rather than come across as a complete jerk, Iruka followed Kakashi's indication and edged out of the booth. "...Fine." But he turned to hiss, "You know full well that I don't need your protection, though," on his way to the door.

All in all, it wouldn't have been quite so bad if the rest of their companions hadn't started muttering between themselves and winking in his direction. They certainly didn't believe that Kakashi was accompanying him to protect him either, and, given the twin smirks on Anko and Kurenai's faces, they had a much more lewd explanation in mind.

That in itself was unsurprising given that he and Kakashi spent an inordinate amount of time together, though the reason was not nearly as salacious as their friends seemed to think. Unfortunately, explaining it to them would take a great deal of the mystery out of the Academy.

_I am starting to feel a bit like a lab rat, though. You'd think after six years, Kakashi would have a good enough idea of what makes me tick to figure out..._ The thought trailed off. "Sooner rather than later?" Now that the initial irritation had passed, Iruka's brain caught up. "You've got something set up, don't you?"

Sometimes there really wasn't any need for a response. The crinkling of Kakashi's visible eye was all the answer he needed.

Iruka chuckled. "Poor Kurenai-san. It's a really good thing I didn't talk her into getting her own papers."

Had he not been seven years old at the time, Iruka would have realized ahead of time just how exceptionally stupid scaring Hatake Kakashi would be. The fallout had been long in coming, what with the war on and the events in Kakashi's life and the fact that their paths never routinely crossed, but happened eventually.

Unfortunately for Kakashi, he managed to pick the month where the Academy students had just learned the cloning technique and instantly combined it with the henge to mess around with their classmates.

Iruka wasn't a teacher yet, but he'd been working as an assistant. After being beset by four disemboweled corpses, two vampires, and a shambling, headless ANBU-esque figure – honestly, what were these kids eating – he was in no mood to deal with the emaciated woman who grabbed his arm, looked up at him with sightless eye sockets and begged him to find her daughter.

A quick motion had flipped a kunai from his leg pouch to his hand, and he indifferently jabbed her hip in passing.

The point had stuck in much more solidly than it should have for a clone, but his actions did trigger the telltale puff of smoke associated with a henge being released.

Who'd have thought that Umino Iruka was responsible for one of the myriad of scars that crisscrossed Kakashi's body? Granted, it was barely an inch of puckered skin just above Kakashi's hipbone because Iruka hadn't really put much force behind it, but it still amused him to think of it.

That event had started a bit of a chain reaction between them. If Kakashi was going to try and scare him, Iruka certainly wasn't going to stand by inactive. He'd never be able to get close to Kakashi without being detected, but he was skilled enough with traps to tie an illusion to them and created a simulated haunting that would take place when he was nowhere around. The first couple he'd tied directly to Kakashi's chakra, but it made them far too obvious, and Kakashi didn't trigger a single one. In response, he'd loosened the criteria and had left the traps armed for any unsuspecting person.

Kakashi had quickly followed suit, and together they'd personally haunted the Academy. Only a few ground rules had been laid out – no other buildings and no kids. Any of the other adults could spring the traps, but the children that passed through the walls were safe.

Iruka'd put his foot down on that last one, but he hadn't needed to. Kakashi had as little desire to harm them as he did.

In retrospect, the whole situation was incredibly petty – the great Hatake Kakashi was ashamed and was going to get him back at all costs – but Iruka had far too much fun setting up his traps and springing Kakashi's to stress about it.

Plus, it had made Kakashi a bit of a fixture in his classroom and his life. Weeks and sometimes even months separated the hauntings while one of them was trying to come up with a stellar idea to spring on the other, and in between them, Kakashi would dog his steps, appearing in his classroom while he was grading, randomly encountering him when he was walking home, and even arriving at the hot springs at the same time as him on one occasion.

He may have only been a chuunin, but Iruka recognized an information gathering strategy when he saw one. The topics of conversation were almost too random to be believable - though he had to give Kakashi credit, had he not been hyper sensitive to Kakashi's intentions, he would have assumed he was just an overly-friendly stranger – and he knew full well that Kakashi was trying to get a handle on what might scare him.

Still, it was remarkably pleasant having such a routine presence in his life, even if it was for such a ridiculous reason.

_I wonder what would happen if he ever got me back? Would this all stop?_

Lost in his thoughts, he barely noticed that they'd reached the Academy entrance. Dark windows loomed over them.

"We've started at least six urban legends." A prong of Kakashi's chakra swept through the doors, deactivating the trap inside.

Iruka grinned. "At least." It was hard to believe really, since the story Kakashi had told that night all those years ago had been the accepted standard and was now almost forgotten. Feeling Kakashi's chakra return, he started up the steps before swiveling towards Kakashi. "Wait, we?"

"Oh, did you not realize I was participating in this?" The door glowed slightly at their presence, a sure sign of a motion-activated trap, but the rest had been disconnected from the trigger, so the academy remained unthreatening.

"That's not what I mean." He huffed. "I _mean_ that all of the stories back there were mine."

"They were not! What about the one with the girl in the doorway." Kakashi looked almost offended.

"I brought that up."

"Maa, well, it's just because you spend more time here, so you're more likely to encounter mine and disarm them before anyone else sets them off." In general, it was easy to tell if the trap had reached its intended target because both he and Iruka made sure to disarm it once it was sprung if for no other reason than to avoid going through it again.

"Oh, please, Kakashi, you spend almost as much time here as I do!" Iruka pushed Akane's classroom door open and crossed the floor to scoop up the stack of papers on her desk. "You even stayed until 2 a.m. three days ago when I was grading, though I have no idea why. It's not as if you got any good information out of it."

"Didn't I?"

"No. You didn't." Iruka rolled his eyes at Kakashi's superior smirk and passed him, heading for the door.

Kakashi remained in the center of the hallway, watching Iruka retreat. "You told Kurenai-san that you needed to pick something up." When Iruka cast a disparaging look over his shoulder, he chuckled. "Soft, chuunin. That's why I'm going to beat you."

"Says the man who screamed like a little girl over nothing." Arguments against that defense never seemed to get Kakashi anywhere, so Iruka used it every chance he got. He turned when Kakashi caught up with him. "What, no retorts?"

"I'm saving them for after this next installment."

"It's that good?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

Iruka laughed. He looked back as they passed through the Academy doors, expecting to see Kakashi's chakra lighting up nodes of the trap. When he didn't, he cast a quizzical glance at Kakashi. "Aren't you going to put it back up?"

"I'm not stupid, Iruka."

"One can always hope." _But since you're not, it will be activated when I least expect it and probably when it's the most inconvenient._ It didn't need to be said – Kakashi was right about his intelligence after all, and he probably read the subtext just fine.

OOOOOOOOO

_Shuriken, trip wire, kunai..._ Iruka set the items aside as he mentally checked them off. _Explosive tags?_ Not in the stack that he'd just moved. He scooped up the pile of shuriken but found nothing underneath it. The thick stack of papers weren't hiding them either, and he dropped his head back with a groan.

Explosive training tags were kept in the southern storeroom. He'd meant to pick them up over lunch, but he'd barely taken two steps out of his classroom before being beset by a multitude of questions from his panicked students. By the time he'd managed to get them all settled, his afternoon classes had been only minutes away from beginning.

His class had gone through the same qualifiers as Akane's two weeks ago. Those that passed were subjected to a second round to more accurately evaluate their abilities and recommend them for special training. The second qualification test started first thing tomorrow morning, and Iruka was nowhere near ready.

He hadn't worried too much about the explosive tags at the time, figuring that he'd just go get them later. Well, it was later now, and he was kicking himself for not remembering sooner. It would take less than ten minutes to get down there and back, but it was just one more irritation that he did not need.

He grabbed the key to the storage room out of the bottom drawer of his desk and made his way to it. A faint smell of aging parchment met his nose the minute he cracked the door open. He stepped carefully over the piles of miscellaneous items that had gathered in here over the years, heading towards the main shelves against the back wall.

Someone had moved the tags. Iruka smacked his head against the shelf. _Perfect._ The shelves above and below were packed with classroom paraphernalia, and a thin stack of paper could easily slide between any of those items. Under the faint hope that whoever had returned the tags previously had put them close to their proper location, he began to fish around, sliding scrolls and a rack of kunai left and then right.

No sign. He paused to rub his hands together, trying to bring some warmth back to his fingertips. An old stack of textbooks sat behind the kunai. He pulled one out and peered at the cover. The edition was older than even the one he'd used at school. _Why do we still have these?_ He leafed through the crackling pages and blinked when he reached the traps section. Some of the diagrams were completely wrong. No wonder they'd seen the need to update it.

He pushed it open under his hand and traced the patterns, only then noticing that his finger was trembling. His hands were freezing. He dropped the book back on the shelf and rubbed his hands together even more briskly then before. When had it gotten so cold in here?

The shivering of his fingers was unabated, so he puffed a couple of breaths onto his hands.

His breath emerged in a silvery cloud. The temperature had plummeted in just a few short seconds. "Kakashi! I do _not_ need this right now!"

The shout would accomplish nothing – neither was ever present during his own haunting – but it made him feel slightly better. All he wanted to do was return home and, with any luck, get more than four hours of sleep before the exams tomorrow. Being followed around by a spook would definitely put a damper on those plans.

"What don't you need?"

The unexpected response made him start. "What are you doing here?"

Kakashi pushed off the doorframe and stepped inside. "Asuma-san mentioned that you were preparing for the second qualifiers. I thought you might need some help."

A single eyebrow arched upwards. "And _you_ didn't believe me when I told you that you spend too much time here."

He turned an inordinate amount of attention to the shelves. "Maaa, it's freezing in here."

"No thanks to you."

"I did not do this." Kakashi picked up a package of mission rations and made a face at it before holding it up towards Iruka.

"We give them to the kids when they do their survival training." Iruka snagged it out of his hands and placed it back on the shelf. "You really expect me to believe that you're not responsible. I admit, it's a great tactic to actually show up, but I'm not..." One of Kakashi's gloved fingers pressed against his lips, interrupting his diatribe. Iruka stared down at, feeling a flush of heat spread from that point outwards.

"Do you hear that?"

He jerked his head out from under Kakashi's touch. "I don't hear anything."

"Shh." Kakashi planted his finger back over Iruka's lips.

His breath fogged around Kakashi's hand. "I..."

Faint scratching noises came from the hallway beyond. Something was being dragged along the walls and was growing closer.

"I hear that." He turned his head toward the far corner of the room where the noises on the other side of the wall were loudest. At the bottom of the shelving unit, a sheaf of yellowed paper stuck out from underneath a stack of buckets. _The explosive tags!_

Iruka grabbed the tags and ducked under Kakashi's arm.

"Iruka?"

"Kakashi, I don't have time for this. I'm sure it's all very clever, but I need to get this exam together." He pushed through the door.

"Wait, Iru..."

The door slammed shut behind him. Iruka raised his eyes to the ceiling and turned around. There was no window in the storage area, but he wouldn't put it past Kakashi to just slam the door behind him to try to scare him. He yanked the door open.

Empty desks. Blank chalkboard.

He was staring into one of the classrooms. "Kakashi?"

No response, but he hadn't really expected one. He eased the door shut carefully.

"Iruka?"

Speaking was remarkably difficult with his heart wedged in his throat, so he settled for whirling and glaring at Kakashi. Before Kakashi pulled the door shut behind him, Iruka caught a glimpse of what was most certainly the storage room. Forget that it was on the other side of the hall from the door he'd just exited.

Kakashi released his hold on the door. As he pulled his hand away, his fingertips left dark blotches on the wood that seemed to reach after his hand.

"Shouldn't that be after me?"

"Shouldn't what be after you?" Kakashi turned, following Iruka's slightly nauseated stare. Dark tendrils curled inquisitively in the air, searching. The blotch on the door narrowed, and the tendrils stretched out further. Kakashi stepped to the right, and the ooze followed him.

"As...disturbing as that is, I really don't see how sending something after yourself is supposed to scare me." He expected a defensive response. Had this actually been another prank haunting, Kakashi should have been much more up in arms about his doubts. When he didn't get one, he turned. "Kakashi?"

Every ounce of his attention was focused on the writhing black stain on the door. He barely blinked.

"Kakashi?"

"...100."

"Is this the point where you pretend to have lost your mind?"

"I'm not doing this."

_Ah, there's the denial. Fine, I'll bite._ "100 what?"

"100 stories." Kakashi's attention finally left the door and speared Iruka with the same intensity. "We created this."

"You're saying that all of our high jinks drew in spirit material?" He hoped his disbelief was apparent on his face and in the half-hearted wave he made at the black stain.

"56 of mine plus 44 of yours. The last candle's gone out."

A quick mental calculation revealed Kakashi's error. "Unless you're counting this one, you've only got 55."

"Not if you count the first one."

He hadn't. "Come on, Kakashi. No one believes that stupid tradition actually works." _This is actually quite clever, and any other day, I'd be happy to enjoy it. Sadly, today is just not going to work._ So the door to the storage room had been switched with the classroom across the hall, which meant his classroom should be the second one down on the north side. Simple. Iruka struck out for the door.

"Maa, Iruka, I know you don't believe in spirits, but..." Kakashi broke off.

Iruka heard what must have made him stop - dripping, coming from the hallway behind them. As he had said all those years ago, everything dripped in this building. He continued on.

"Iruka!"

The waspish response building in his throat never made it out. Black tendrils shot out around him before snapping around his arms and waist and pulling him backwards hard enough to yank his feet out from under him. He flew past Kakashi, who grabbed for his wrist but was two seconds too late, and through the pockmarked door. As he passed through it, he caught a glimpse of black boils on the surface that were slowly creeping along the wall towards Kakashi and burgeoning out into a heavyset form of impossible proportions. He also noticed, right before he hit the floor, that the door suffered no damage from his passing.

Considering the general predilection of shinobi students to 'test' out their new skills on their teachers, this was not the first time Iruka'd been thrown to the floor of a classroom. The wood floors were remarkably forgiving. He picked himself up slowly.

Classroom? This should have been the storeroom - it had been when Kakashi'd come out this door - but two chalkboards, a collection of desks and a general lack of assorted accoutrements suggested otherwise.

_I'm never going to get this test set up. I really hope the coffee maker hasn't turned into a gremlin, I'm definitely going to need it._ This was cleverer certainly but also far more elaborate than anything Kakashi'd done before. Iruka had been able to work – albeit uncomfortably – through all of the others.

Nothing in the classroom seemed to be considering eating him, so he took a minute to plan. The traps were limited to the building, and he didn't dare go back into the hall. Who knew if he'd be able to make it too his own classroom, let alone find it with the doors changing. He headed for the window instead, stopping to grab a flashlight from the emergency kit under the teacher's desk.

From the outside, he'd be able to make his way down to his window and climb back in. He touched his pocket to make sure the explosive tags were still there and slid the window open.

Scratching had started in the hallway again. He could just picture a shambling shinobi raking the point of a bloody kunai down the wall, and the image made him snort. The original story had been a classic. He really should make something out of it one of these days.

The door rattled violently.

Iruka almost fell out of the window.

It rattled again, shaking in its tracks. Something was struggling to get in.

Deep primal fear – the kind that made you want to crawl under your covers and hold your breath, praying not to be noticed - rooted him in place. For several moments, he kept his gaze fixed on the window frame in front of him, even though he knew he could quell the fear by turning and seeing Kakashi's silhouette on the mostly opaque window in the door.

That's right. He'd passed Kakashi on his ungraceful way into the room, so he had to still be out there. All he had to do was _look_.

The hulking figure backlit against the window was far too big to be Kakashi. Hell, it was almost far too big to be human if you discounted the Akimichi clan. He snapped his eyes back to the window. _Illusion._ He reminded himself. _It's all just part of the trap, and it can't hurt you._ Kakashi _isn't going to hurt you._

Whatever was on the other side gave the door a final shake. He looked up in time to see the shadow slide off of the door. The steps sounded off – a strange syncopated rhythm of drag-thump, as if it was pulling a lame limb behind it.

_Drag. Thump. Draaag. Thump._

Iruka shuddered. He was not going back into the hall if he could help it.

Outside the window was far darker than it should be. The Academy didn't have any external night lighting, but the village did, and that tended to spill over into the Academy grounds. He leaned over the empty space, trying to see the ground that should have been less than four feet below him.

"What are you...?"

Chakra slammed into his hand, practically gluing him to the window and giving him a lever point to pull himself around and throw a punch at the person behind him.

Kakashi caught his hand deftly before he made contact. "Whoa!"

"Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"Don't sneak up on you? You get dragged off into the depths of the Academy by something, and you're angry at me for sneaking up on you?"

"You almost gave me a heart attack!"

"I almost...!" Kakashi dropped his hand and grabbed his shoulders. "I thought I lost you. I thought that our actions had lead to you being taken, and _I_ almost gave you a heart attack."

_He's serious; he was really worried._ Kakashi's fingers were biting hard into his shoulders, and Iruka shifted to try to ease the pressure, but Kakashi's attention was elsewhere.

Kakashi was staring out the window over his shoulder. A certain whiteness around his eye suggested he was not just looking at the foliage.

A figure – the same silhouette that had marred the door only a few minutes ago – hunched against the side of the building. Metal flashed in the dim light spilling from the window, making a brilliant arc with the end point somewhere in the vicinity of Iruka's leg.

He pushed back hard off his hand, reversing the chakra to shove him away from the window instead of holding him too it, and his actions were aided by Kakashi's grip on his shoulder and waist. They collapsed to the ground just inside the window. Iruka scrambled to his feet and slammed it before retreating several steps to the dubious safety of the desk.

Kakashi was genuinely worried. The building was the only area in play in this game. That figure was _outside_, still touching the building, but outside. They'd never done that before.

_Is it possible?_ Iruka had never believed in ghosts, and he wasn't going to start now. But there was always the possibility of residual chakra imprinting from the most common jutsu's used around it. Given the amount of chakra thrown around in the academy over the years, it was not outside the realm of possibility that he and Kakashi had created something through this childish game.

He groaned and slid down the wall to join Kakashi on the floor. If it wasn't one of his illusions, Iruka had even less chance of finishing what he needed tonight. His head dropped back and clunked against the wall. "Let's assume it's residual chakra. I have some suppression seals in my classroom. If we can get to them, we can at least isolate ourselves from whatever's going on."

"You have _suppression seals_ in your classroom?"

"Have you ever tried to teach a kid with no training and more chakra than he knows what to do with?" He snickered at Kakashi's baleful look.

"You could have warned me."

"I expected a fine upstanding jounin like yourself to be able to handle it. Besides," He waved a dismissive hand. "It's not like I used them all that often. Only when the classroom was in imminent danger of being blown up."

"Here I thought we'd built some sort of relationship of mutual respect."

"Of course there's respect! I did expect you could handle it, but then I'm not the screamer in this relationship." The minute the words were out of his mouth, Iruka wished he could shove them back in. The look of supreme entertainment that crossed Kakashi's face heated his own from ear to ear.

"Maa, how am I supposed to know that, Iruka-_sensei?_"

His cheeks flamed scarlet, and the flashlight suddenly became much more interesting. "The _suppression seals_." He gritted out from between clenched teeth. "Are under the false bottom of the top right drawer of my desk. It seemed like the rooms reset when you came out into the hall before. I can't be entirely sure, but this looks like the classroom that had replaced the storage room."

Remarkably, Kakashi seemed to be letting him completely sidestep the unfortunate wording.

"So, I'll go out first, since I know exactly where they are and how to get to them."

"You think I can't get into your drawer?"

"I'm sure you can, Kakashi, but it will probably be faster if I go."

"Perhaps I should rephrase. You think I haven't been in there before?"

"You would have known about the suppression seals." Iruka pointed out. It was extremely rare for him to out-think Kakashi, so he enjoyed the momentary boost of satisfaction. "I'm not stupid, either."

"I never said you were. Had you been, this would have gotten boring a long time ago."

"Well, I'm glad I can be entertaining." Why was he grinning stupidly at Kakashi? Something that likely had a taste for human blood was prowling the hall, he was about to walk right into its arms, and he was acting like a teenager. "Anyway, if you give me a ten count and then follow, that should reset the rooms long enough for us to get down to my classroom. It would be safer to go out together, but we'll probably never find the right room if we do that. Sound good?"

The lights above them flickered once and turned off, plunging the room and the hallway beyond into shadow. Iruka cursed under his breath and heard Kakashi echo it. He fumbled for the flashlight he'd set down by his knee, thumbing the switch to turn it on.

Kakashi looked even more ghostly in the faint beam of the flashlight than normal, but the annoyed squinting at being blinded did a good job of dispelling that image.

Iruka chuckled. _Now or never._ "Look, I don't think anything's going to happen out there. Residual chakra shouldn't be strong enough to do any lasting damage, but if... If..." He didn't really need to explain. They both lived in a world where people tended not to come home more often than not. Regrets had no business in a shinobi's life, and they were all too well aware that the last thing you said to someone might be the _last_ thing you ever said to them. "Regardless of the outcome and all teasing and name-calling aside, this whole thing has been one of the highlights of my life. I think, after this, we'll have to stop, but I hope... Having you around... I..."

Even though he must have been little more than a paler shadow in the darkness, Kakashi was staring directly at him. That was not helping him gather his thoughts. At least the lack of light covered his steaming ears. He finished in a rush. "I hope this isn't it for us."

That was as good as it was going to get. He shoved off the floor and onto his feet and was out the door before Kakashi could respond.

The flashlight illuminated a thin tube of air, as if it was having a battle with the darkness and the darkness was winning. He strained his ears, one foot placed carefully in front of the other while he listened for any sign of the specter. A faint echo of the drag-thump footsteps reached him, but he couldn't pin point it.

_One... Two..._ Kakashi would be out behind him at ten.

The flashlight went out and came back on before he could even swear at it. It flickered anemically, and he smacked it against his leg. "Come on."

On. Off. On. Light reflections from the mirror at the end of the hall were playing havoc with his night vision. The flashlight died again, but he couldn't make anything out.

On.

_Oh, dear god, there's something behind me!_ Iruka whirled and clapped a hand over his mouth, but didn't manage to quite stifle the yelp.

The hall plunged into darkness one last time, and then the flashlight came sluggishly back to life.

Nothing was in the hall with him, and Iruka breathed a sigh of relief that almost drowned out the faint rustle from directly overhead.

_Above me!_

The Academy ceilings weren't tall, and the minute he looked upwards, he came nose to nose with a cracked and yellowing ANBU mask. Part of the white forehead area had a long smear that looked suspiciously like dried blood. Both feet and a hand were glued to the ceiling with chakra, but the other hand swung free, gripping a long kunai.

He would have braced to attack – his hand had strayed to his weapon's pouch the minute he'd heard the noise - but he didn't get the chance. Having a jounin tackle you at full speed was remarkably disrupting.

His head smacked hard against the floor, and Kakashi's muscular bulk crashed down on top of him, knocking the air out of his lungs. The wood was alarmingly solid underneath him – no creeping ooze, no blistering stain.

Most of his view was blocked by Kakashi's shoulder, so he craned his neck to see over it. No reaching shadows on the inside of the doors. No deranged ANBU hanging from the ceiling.

Plus the lights had miraculously come back on.

"Ka. Ka. Shi." The abs pressed against his trembled with barely suppressed laughter. "_Where_ are the spooks and specters?"

"Maa, you see..."

No amount of squirming would free him from Kakashi's arms, but Iruka tried anyway. When that failed, he socked Kakashi twice in the shoulder. Hard.

"I win."

"Excuse me?"

Kakashi propped himself up on his elbow. "You screamed. I win."

"I did no such thing. It was a yelp at best."

"Scream."

"No."

"Scream."

"Manly expression of shock."

"Scream."

"Squeak."

"How is that possibly better than a scream? Besides," He cut off Iruka's retort. "That's not the part I'm particularly interested in, anyway."

"It's not?"

A silver eyebrow arched skyward.

"Oh, that."

"That." Kakashi agreed.

"Th-that...That... That was a confession under duress, and you can't...!" He never got a chance to voice the threat, which was probably good because he really had no idea what to say.

Kakashi leaned over him and kissed him softly.

"You...?" His brain refused to get a handle on the situation. Kakashi had just kissed him.

"I don't know if you meant what you said as friendship or something more, but I know how I _hope_ you meant it. You were the first person to remind me that I had a human side when I thought it had long since died. Thankfully, by the time I got around to getting you back for it, I'd remembered how important that was. This was never a petty dispute; it's a game played with someone that I enjoy playing with." He smiled down at Iruka's dumbstruck expression. "At least, I think I will."

"Think you will?"

"Enjoy playing with you."

Iruka twisted to try to bury his burning face against Kakshi's arm, staunchly ignoring the snickering brought on by his embarrassment. Meanwhile his brain flailed for a reasonable exit, finally landing on the issue that had been in the forefront of his mind before Kakashi demolished his train of thought. "Test! I've got to finish the test!"

Despite his struggling, Kakashi refused to release him. "I had a clone do that."

He stopped fighting. "Really? The whole test? It's changed a lot since you took it, you know."

"Maa, yes, but I do happen to spend most of my time with the teacher. I like to think I've picked up a few things."

"Thank you, Kakashi." He might actually get some sleep tonight. Then again, if Kakashi's hands kept straying in the same direction they had been for the last few minutes, sleep might have just dropped to the very bottom of his list of priorities.

"Iruka-kun?"

With the illusion dispersed, noises were much easier to pinpoint. Kurenai's voice, for example, was coming from the entrance hall.

"Iruka-kun? Asuma said you were working on the tests, and I thought you might need some help. Hello?"

Her heels clicked towards the hallway.

"Please tell me this doesn't run through the whole thing every time someone triggers it." Iruka could feel cold sneaking up the side of his leg that wasn't pressed against Kakashi, and he could just see his breath begin to hang in the air. "Oh, your silence is so reassuring."

OOOOOOOOO

Hope you enjoyed the cheesy haunting! I had so much freaking fun writing little!Kakashi and little!Iruka. :D

Water_bby requested a 'holiday ghost' (something haunting the academy or hokage tower), and since it was closer to Halloween than Christmas, this is what I wound up with! Thanks so much for such a wonderful, interesting and challenging prompt, and huge, massive thanks to SumiHatake/Kiterie for beta-ing and putting up with all of my stressing/bitching about whether this was going to work out okay (and smacking me in the head to make me stop).


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